Getting naked

The body work is on (mostly...one or two more holes to drill), and my god, nobody here is likely to care, but if it wasn't obvious already Hotbodies products are the SHITTIEST pieces of crap in the industry!. I wanted race bodywork that was CHEAP so that I could worry less about crashing, and because I didn't care at all about how it looked close up, I went for the cheapest, crappiest bodywork known to man: Hotbodies. The fit is terrible. The finish is terrible. The "ready-to-paint primer" is gone on all the corners, and there are all sorts of blemishes and deep gouges from poor packaging/handling. The fiberglass is lumpy and irregular. But I knew what I was getting myself into, and I stand by my decision. Just a word to the wise: if you want quality, get something else!

Anyway, here is the (unpainted) bodywork on the bike, though chances are pretty good I'm going to use white as a base coat anyway:

Starting to look like it might be a real track bike, ya?

EDIT: OH NO, IT'S ANOTHER ETERNAL WALL OF TEXT!

My experience wasn't quite the same, but one aspect of my first track day experience was: by the end of lap one of session one of track day one, I was wondering how I was going to afford all the track days I just had to do.

I started riding my own motorcycle at the end of '07 on one of the new '08 Ninja 250s. I would have started sooner, but as soon as the new-gen 250s went to press, I new I had to wait for the only 250 that, in my mind, didn't look like poo. Ordered one as soon as dealers allowed it.

Now I have to say, motorcycling itself kind of happened like track days for me. The truth is I've been a car man all my life. From the time I was a little (and I mean LITTLE) kid, I was utterly obsessed with cars, driving, and racing. When I was 9 years old, my family was on road trip and we saw a book called the 1994 New Car Report. It was about 600 pages thick with a full two-three page review of every car from major manufacturers available for sale in the US. By the end of the road trip, it was committed to memory, not because I wanted to memorize it, but because I read through it so avidly again and again while sitting in my parents' backseat. When my parents finally lifted their ban on video games and let me buy an original Playstation with cobbled together stacks of dollar bills and quarters, I spent the rest of my weekends playing Gran Turismo with my friends. My dad, a professor, was worried that a kid that could point out make/model/year of any car on the road from 100ft was going to fail out of school for lack of interest in anything else. Thankfully, he was wrong, but you get my point.

I'd always wanted to try riding a motorcycle though, so I took the BRC in mid '07. At first it was really hard for me. As I've mentioned before, I used to be a hardcore road rider (bicycle rider, that is), and not being able to "hold on" to the handlebars on a motorcycle really messed up my throttle control for a while. Those starting drills were real hard for me. But once we got to the faster drills where my bike handling skills and comfort came into play, I was in heaven. It was just like being on a bike...but I DIDN'T HAVE TO PEDAL! That moment was the start of my motorcycling obsession.

As for track days, I got into them pretty early on, and in much the same fashion. I'd always wanted to try a track day with a car, but the risk of crashing a car was just too high, and that would cost an arm and a leg to fix. Motorcycles, on the other hand, could be expensive, but even a totalled bike wouldn't cost me as much as doing serious damage to my daily driver. Finally, one of my friends got me to try a track day with him (he'd never been either). It seemed very expensive, and while I was excited as all hell, I figured it would be a one-time fun experience and that would be that. But it only took two minutes for me to realize I was going to have to do that sort of thing a lot. Just too much damn fun.

Track days aren't terribly expensive at face value. Here in Seattle there's a very technical, interesting track a mere 35-45 minutes away. No problem. Each track day, if you pre-register, costs about $175, and if you compare it to something like go-karting (not real Kart racing, but just indoor go-karting), it's much cheaper per minute. Go-karting usually runs about $15 for 10 minutes: $1.5 per minute. Track days are usually between $0.50 and $1 per minute. And you're at a real track. And you're on a real machine.

The catch is that you're going to inevitably want to spend a crapton of money to make track days easier. First off, you'll want a trailer. Riding to and from the track has many downsides. You can't take tools, water, food, or clothing with you. More importantly, however, you are really in no position to ride home after whizzing around a track at 165mph all day long. You're tired, sore, possibly braindead, and your sense of speed is totally out of whack.

So you buy a trailer.

But now that you have a trailer, you need a way to attach your bike. Inevitably, you'll go the "cheap route" and get some ratchet straps. But then you'll blow a fork seal, or your bike's bodywork will get damaged, and you'll decide to spring for one of these: a strapless trailer restraint.

Then you realize "crap, if I have a bad crash, I'm going to destroy all these expensive OEM parts." So you go about systematically replacing all sorts of parts with cheaper race equivalents. I've replaced my levers, my rearsets, my clip-ons, my front frame, my exhaust, and now my bodywork.

After a while, you start getting faster, and boy, for those of you who haven't been to a track, once you start really pushing your tires, they get DESTROYED. Check out these used tires:

So not only are you forced to buy grippier and grippier (and more expensive) tires the faster you get, but you also have to replace them more often (grippier usually means softer which usually means shorter life). I'm not terrifyingly fast, so I get about 4 track days out of a set of tires. I know people who manage only one or two days out of their tires (we're not talking slicks here). In any case, that's another $250-350 every couple of track days. Once you start getting really fast, you may opt to go for racing slicks, in which case you also need to buy a generator, fuel, and tire warmers to get those slicks up to temp before you go out.

Then, once you start hitting the threshold of your stock bike (in terms of handling), you begin to consider modifications. At first, you'll just pay a guy to set up your stock suspension for you, but after a while, the stock suspension just won't do. You'll maybe get your forks/shock resprung and/or revalved. Maybe you get aftermarket forks/shock. Then you'll want more responsive brakes, so you upgrade to steel-braided brake lines and more aggressive brake pads.

So yes. A track hobby can get VERY expensive. It can also be an affordable off-and-on thing that you do with your bone-stock bike at a leisurely pace (you can still learn a ton that way), but you'd be surprised at how people, even those strapped for cash, seem to get sucked in. I met a new guy at the track a few times last year, and after two track days, he decided to race in the novice class (like Megaspaz) this year.

Oh and speaking of racing and Megaspaz, he's still around, just not on BBM apparently. He's racing novice in California this year, and should have an interesting time. Racing is everything I said about track days, but all of those expensive things are almost required. You need to be able to compete with your peers, both in terms of handling and performance. You'd be amazed at how much money goes into even a top-level CLUB racer's bike. The guy who set the last track record at Pacific Raceways is looking to SELL one of his racebikes for $15,000, and if he gets a buyer, he'll be selling at nearly a $25,000 loss. (For those of you that don't know what I mean, think of it this way. At the top, there's MotoGP and World Superbike. Below that is national-level competition: AMA Superbike in the US, British Superbike, Australian Superbike, etc.. Below THAT is local club-level racing. These guys are ENTIRELY self-funded. They are usually the team driver, the team mechanic, the team manager, and the racer, all at the same time!)

So do I plan to race? Heh. Don't think so. If I win the lottery? Maybe. But the truth is, most people never PLANNED to race, just as they didn't PLAN to pick up a track addiction, just as they didn't PLAN to pick up a motorcycle addiction. It all just happens. So we'll see ;)